US REFUSES TO RULE OUT SANCTIONS AS INDIA BUYS RUSSIAN MISSILE SYSTEM
▶ India will sign contract worth $5 billion but Washington says New Delhi should think twice about ‘troubling’ sale
India will sign a deal this week to buy Russian air defence systems, running the risk of drawing US sanctions barely a month after a Pentagon official warned New Delhi about arms deals with Moscow.
The deal will be signed when President Vladimir Putin visits New Delhi today and tomorrow as part of an annual summit between the two countries.
“The key feature of this visit will be the signing of the agreement to deliver S-400 air defence systems,” Yury Ushakov, Mr Putin’s foreign policy aide, told Agence France-Presse. “The value of the contract will be more than $5 billion (Dh18.36bn).”
India is the world’s largest importer of arms, and is Russia’s biggest customer.
By value, Russia provides 60 per cent of India’s defence imports – a figure that declined from 79 per cent between 2008 and 2012, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The S-400, which packs a battery of four missiles – some of which have a range of 400 kilometres – is an anti-aircraft system used by the Russian military for a decade.
India has been interested in buying the S-400 since 2015. This deal will involve the purchase of five units.
But the systems are banned under a US law – the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act – signed by President Donald Trump in August last year. It was part of a batch of sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea. Since the law was passed, the US has shown its intent to act on it.
Last month, the US State Department announced sanctions on China’s Equipment Development Department, a wing of its military, in retaliation for Beijing’s purchase of SU-35 fighter jets and S-400 systems from Russia.
The US is also concerned about Turkey’s plans to buy S-400 units from Russia.
Washington considered cancelling a sale of F-35 jets to Ankara if the Turkey-Russia deal goes ahead.
India will hope for a waiver from such sanctions, as in 2013 when the US granted exemptions to India and a handful of other nations so they could keep importing oil from Iran, despite sanctions that were already in place.
But Mr Trump’s government is insistent that no country flout its sanctions. Last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in New Delhi that although waivers for Iranian imports will be considered, India must eventually stop buying oil from Tehran. After Mr Pompeo’s visit, Bloomberg reported that India’s stateowned oil importers planned to buy no Iranian oil at all in November. This year, India was the second-largest buyer of oil from Iran.
No exemptions will be forthcoming on the S-400 either, if Mr Trump’s administration is to be believed.
In a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington in August, Randall Schriver, the assistant secretary of defence for Asian and Pacific security, confirmed that the president can grant waivers in special cases. One example would be if a country is still in the process of replacing its Russian-produced arms with western-made equipment.
But the existence of these waivers, Mr Schriver said, led India to believe that it would be protected “from any fallout from this legislation no matter what they do”.
“I would say that’s a bit misleading,” he said.
“We would still have very significant concerns if India pursued major new [Russian] platforms and systems,” Mr Schriver said. “I can’t sit here and tell you that they would be exempt, that we would use that waiver.”
Describing the intended deal to buy S-400s as troubling, he said: “Our strong preference ... is to seek alternatives and see if we could be a partner to India in addressing those defence needs.”
Separately, another American official, speaking anonymously to the Press Trust of India two weeks ago, called the S-400 deal “a significant transaction” and urged New Delhi to “think twice about [its] engagement with the Russian defence and intelligence sectors”.
But Russia is still India’s most important defence partner, said Sushant Singh, a New Delhi defence analyst and a former lieutenant colonel in the Indian army.
“To focus too much on the Americans is to ignore the Russian angle,” Mr Singh said.
“India is heavily dependent on Russian spares and ammunition, which gives them leverage over us. It’s difficult for India not to take cognisance of that.”